This talk demonstrates what I refer to as "bodies of exception": the sick bodies of the national collective and their literary constructions. During the foundation of the Turkish Republic, issues of health were not only crucial due to a weakened population, but they also actively contributed to the nation-making discourse. The medical imagination on the health of the members of the national collective melted into the clear-cut definitions of the ideal citizen as one with a healthy and sturdy body. Throughout the twentieth century, diseases such as syphilis, tuberculosis and cancer, along with the notion of patienthood, occupied a focal place in the literary imagination in genres from nati...